[themachine]

Can you actually verify that mysql is running?

# ps aux | grep mysql


Can you connect to the mysql server? (might be able to just use 'mysql' without any flags if you haven't set a root password)

# host01:/# mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 1360 to server version: 4.0.24_Debian-10sarge1-log

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql>


If not, then I'd check the log files. I'm not familiar with mandrake, but standard places would be /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog, /var/log/mysql.err, /var/log/mysql.log, /var/log/mysql/*, etc.

see if there are any entries related to mysql after starting it, stopping it, restarting it ... what have you.

If you find any errors please post them.